After two interviews and a 10-minute pitch, Nashville entrepreneur Aireka Harvell kind of couldn't believe Amazon still had more questions for her.
Still, Harvell dutifully opened her laptop screen at 6 p.m. on a recent Thursday to talk about her mobile marketing platform, Nodat, with Howard Wright, global head of startups at Amazon Web Services.
It turns out, the only real question Wright had was for his colleagues.
"Are we gonna invest in Aireka?" Wright asked, turning his screen to show Harvell his coworkers seated around a table. Their thumbs went up, and the tears streamed down Harvell's face.
With that vote, Harvell earned one of 25 slots in Amazon Web Services' new Impact Accelerator for Black Founders. Harvell's business, Nodat, will receive $225,000 of cash and credits for Amazon Web Services products.
The value is equal to nine times what Harvell raised in 2020 from Sherry Stewart Deutschmann's Sunset Ventures, previously her only other outside investment. Amazon isn't taking any ownership stake in Nodat, putting Harvell in a stronger position as she pursues her $1 million target for a seed round of funding. Also this month, Harvell won a pitch contest at Williamson Inc.'s Franklin Innovation Center.
"It's really huge for us at this stage," Harvell said. "All the technology we've built, all of our customers, that's all been bootstrapped before now."
It's not just cash. Harvell and her chief technology officer just returned from a week at Amazon's Seattle headquarters, where Amazon executives worked with program participants on leadership, product management and other mentoring.
In late July, Amazon is arranging for participants to travel to New York City to pitch 15 investors, Harvell said.
Nodat uses geo-targeting to enable small businesses and content creators to personalize ads and alerts for consumers near their business, based on the interests that Nodat users indicate when they download the app and create a profile. Nodat is generating recurring revenue and Harvell said she's recently had success signing marketing agencies — who can use it for their clients — as well as nonprofits who want to get information to community members.
Harvell has nine people working for her, some who have equity stakes and others who are contractors. She said she's in the process of onboarding 1,200 businesses onto Nodat.
